Tracking Campaigns with G-Lock Analytics

Transcription

1 User Guide Tracking Campaigns with G-Lock Analytics Copyright 2009 G-Lock Software. All Rights Reserved.

2 Table of Contents Introduction... 3 Creating User Account on G-Lock Analytics. 4 Downloading Redirect Script.. 6 Adding Campaign to G-Lock Analytics.. 7 How to Track Clicks: Inserting Tracking Link into 10 How to Track Opens: Inserting Tracking Image into Merging Custom Field into Tracking Link. 16 Viewing Tracking Reports on G-Lock Analytics 8 18 How Tracking Metrics are Calculated Afterword 24 2

3 Introduction With G-Lock Analytics service you can clearly understand what is happening to your s after they are sent. When you are creating your message, you simply replace your links with our "track" links, and place a small image in your (for HTML s only). This is a transparent image that is placed within the . When a recipient opens the , the image is loaded and G-Lock Analytics records an open. With these types of reports you can figure out if your customers find your s interesting, or what part of them they like more. For instance, if you are selling products online, and you send out a regular newsletter with a list of new products, you could use G-Lock Analytics to see what your customers are most interested in. With G-Lock Analytics you can: Track open rate (for HTML s) Track click through rate (for HTML and text s) Track click-throughs using your own domain Measure the subscribers interest in your content and offer by recording repeated opens and clicks (ROE Opens, ROE Clicks) View the geographical localization of unique opens Get real time reports about your campaign performance Export tracking reports to a file Warning! G-Lock Analytics interface is compatible with Firefox 2 and 3, Safari and Opera browsers. But it's not compatible with the Internet Explorer 6 and 7. Please, don't use IE 6 or 7 to open G-Lock Analytics. 3

4 Creating User Account on G-Lock Analytics To use G-Lock Analytics, you need to setup a user account. The campaign tracking metrics will be stored in your account. You will be able to login and see the reports at any time. To create a user account: 1. Go to G-Lock Analytics 2. Click Create It under the login form 3. Fill in the form 4. Click Signup Your account will be created. A confirmation with the account activation link will be sent at your address. Click on the link in the confirmation message to activate your user account on G-Lock Analytics. After the account is activated, login with your address and password. 4

5 Important! Note that a free account has this limitation: After 200 points are used, tracking links inside the stop working. If you like the service and want to continue using it without limitations, you must change your free plan to any from our paid plans that suits your needs best. You can change or cancel your plan at any time. G-Lock Analytics works on a point-based algorithm. Every time a recipient opens your or clicks on a tracking link in your , one point is deducted from your user account. We have one-time and flexible monthly point payment plans. Read more about our Payment Plans and choose the plan that suits your marketing needs best. 5

6 Downloading Redirect Script After you're logged in, you will be suggested to download a redirect script and upload it to your website. Placing a redirect script onto your website will allow you keep your brand in front of your recipients and not confuse them with a generic click tracking link such as You don t want to send subscribers to a third-party website. Links that go to a tracking domain may cause some recipients to not trust you and to not click through. If you upload a redirect script to YOUR website, tracking links will go through your own domain and will look like If your website is hosted on a Unix/Linux platform, download a PHP redirect script. If your website is hosted on a Windows platform, download an ASP redirect script. Upload the redirect script to your website. Example: 6

7 Adding Campaign to G-Lock Analytics Now you can add an campaign to your account. An campaign = message you will send and track. To add a campaign, click on Add Campaign button and fill in the form: Campaign Name: Start Date: End Date: Any name for your campaign (you can enter the subject of your , for example) The date when G-Lock Analytics starts collecting metrics for the campaign (by default the current date is inserted) The date when G-Lock Analytics stops collecting tracking 7

8 metrics for the campaign, and the campaign becomes inactive (points are not deducted from your account when the campaign is inactive). Despite this, the links in your message continue working, and the recipients can still follow them. But those opens and clicks will not be counted. It's recommended that you set the end date approximately 2 weeks later than the start date because the peak of user activity usually falls to two first weeks after the sending date. For example, if your start date is 07/10/2009, you can set the end date to 07/24/2009. Number of Recipients Enter the number of recipients in your group. Number of Bounced: Use Redirect Script: Redirect Script URL: Active If you process bounced s, you can enter the number of bounces into this field after the is sent. Yes Type the URL of the redirect script on your website, for example: Yes (check this box to enable the campaign tracking) After you fill in the form at the Step 1, click Next to go to the Step 2 and add the links you will track. At the Step 2 type the URL you want to track and the anchor text for your URL (optional) and click + (Add). Add all the URLs you want to track here. To edit the URL and/or anchor text, click on Edit icon next to the link. To remove the URL, click on - (Delete). 8

9 When done, click Finish. G-Lock Analytics will convert your regular links into tracking links that you will use in your to track clicks. 9

10 How to Track Clicks: Inserting Tracking Link into Copy a tracking link generated by G-Lock Analytics and insert it into your instead of the regular link. You can copy a tracking link immediately after it s generated. Or, if you added a campaign with tracking links in the past and you want to use them now, click on the campaign name and then click on Tracking Code and Links tab. Copy the tracking link(s). 10

11 Open your client, open your and highlight the anchor text that you would like to hyperlink. Click on Insert Link button and paste the tracking link you copied from G-Lock Analytics. Or, if you already have the links in the , just replace the regular links with the tracking links generated by G-Lock Analytics. Important! Make sure the tracking link begins with And merge a variable that stores the recipient s address at the end the 11

12 tracking link after p=. If you don t merge the recipient s into the tracking link, metrics may be calculated incorrectly. Example: [ ] Replace [ ] with the correct field name that stores the recipients addresses in your address book. 12

13 If the recipient clicks on the tracking link, G-Lock Analytics will count a click. Tip: If you want to attach a tracking link to an image and track the image clicks, add a tracking link for the image to G-Lock Analytics, insert the image into the message, then select the image, click on Insert Link and paste your tracking link for the image. The image will become hyperlinked. When a recipient clicks on it, G-Lock Analytics will count an image click. How to Track Opens: Inserting Tracking Image into To track the opens, you need to insert a tracking image HTML code into the source of your . To do this, click on the campaign name and then click on Tracking Code and Links tab. Copy an open tracking code. 13

14 Go to the HTML Source of your and paste the open tracking code somewhere at the end of the HTML code, for example, before the </BODY> tag. Important! Make sure the open tracking link begins with And merge a variable that stores the recipient s address at the end the tracking link after p=. If you don t merge the recipient s into the tracking link, metrics may be calculated incorrectly. The correct tracking image code must look like below: <img src=" width="1" height="1" /> 14

15 Replace [ ] with the correct field name that stores the recipients addresses in your address book. This small transparent image will track the opens and report them to your account on G-Lock Analytics. Note: The open tracking code works for HTML s only. If the recipient reads the with images blocked, or on a mobile device in the plain text format, the open is not counted. 15

16 Merging Custom Field into Tracking Link In some cases senders are trying to track each recipient and need to embed a certain custom field, for example UserID, into the link. That field is then used to identify the recipient on their server to access certain content. You can merge a custom field into the tracking link and make G-Lock Analytics pass that field to the Destination link once a recipient clicks on the link in the . Here is how to do this. Let's suppose you have a link with the embedded custom field that you want to track. Example: Copy the link without the custom field (in our example, without &userid=%%userid%%) and add it to G-Lock Analytics to convert it into the tracking link as described in the previous chapter. Here is the URL you need to copy and add to G-Lock Analytics: The tracking link (Replacement link) will be as follows: Insert the Replacement link (tracking link) into the message. Go to the message source and locate the tracking link, for example: <A href=" here</a> Merge your custom field (in our example, userid=%%userid%%) into the tracking link and add &tr_ before your custom field. In the result 16

17 your tracking link must include &tr_userid=%%userid%%, for example: <A href=" here</a> The tr_ prefix makes G-Lock Analytics recognize the custom field inside the link and pass the value to the Destination link. The tr_ prefix will be removed from the Destination link. Below is an example of the URL the recipient will see in his browser when he clicks on the tracked link: 17

18 Viewing Tracking Reports on G-Lock Analytics After your message is sent, you can go to your G-Lock Analytics account to view the tracking reports. Login to your user account and click on the campaign in the list. You ll be taken to the campaign snapshot where you ll see a pie chart that shows the quantity of unique clicks and unique opens in % and a graph chart. On the graph chart you can see unique clicks/unique opens, clicks/unique clicks, and opens/unique opens. Over Time Activity By clicking on Over Time Activity you can view the campaign statistics for a certain period of time. You can define the time period yourself. The graph charts will show you Unique Clicks/Unique opens, Unique Clicks/Clicks, and unique Opens/Opens for the selected time interval. Recipient Activity By clicking on Recipient Activity you can view the recipients who opened your and who clicked on the links within the . There are two tabs: Opened and Clicked. Under the Opened tab you ll get a list of recipients who opened the . Under the Clicked tab you ll get a list of recipients who clicked on the links in the . 18

19 You can export the addresses either to a CSV file or Excel XML file. Link Click Activity By clicking on Link Click Activity you can view which links in your were clicked, who clicked them and how many times. Just click on the URL or at the + next to the URL and the statistics for this link will be displayed. You can export the report either to a CSV file or Excel XML file. Geographic Localization Under Geographic Localization you can see the recipient s activity on your all over the world for a selected period of time. Put the mouse on a country to see how many visits your got from that country. Under the map there are two tabs: Opened and Clicked. Click on Opened to view a list of countries from which your got opens. And under the Clicked tab you can view the countries from which the link was clicked. 19

20 How Tracking Metrics are Calculated Here we'll explain how G-Lock Analytics calculates some of tracking metrics and we'll give some tips on how you can improve the statistics. Open Rate (%) To calculate the open rate, the number of unique opens is divided by the number of s sent. The result is multiplied by 100%. Example: I sent the to 4 people. I got 3 unique opens. My open rate is: 3/4 = x 100% = 75% How you can improve the open rate: - Re-phrase subject line to grab the recipients' attention and entice them to open your s; - Send your messages on a different day, or at a different time of the day; - Change your "From" field. Instead of using your address, consider using your name or your company's name in order the recipients could easily recognize the sender. You can read this article for more tips on how you can improve your open rate 20

21 Note: I'd like to share one more secret with you. The opens are tracked using a small transparent image in the code. But many clients block the images by default. If your message contains some pictures, for example, pictures of the products, goods you're selling or the like, it is a good incentive for the recipient to click on the link and download the images. The open will be counted in this case. But what if your doesn't contain any images besides the tracking one? Why will the recipient download any pictures if the doesn't contain them? Therefore, I would recommend that you insert your photo near your signature at the end of the message (like I did in my s). As the alternative text for the photo you can write something like "My Photo". It won't arouse any suspicion with the recipient and there is a chance the recipient will download the photo to see you. The tracking image will be loaded together with your photo and the open will be counted. Click-Through Rate (%) To calculate the click-through rate, the number of unique clicks is divided by the number of s sent. The result is multiplied by 100%. Example: I sent the to 4 people. I got 3 unique clicks. My click-through rate is: 3/4 = x 100% = 75% How you can improve the click-through rate: - Change the location of the links in your message (place them higher, lower, left, right, centered); 21

22 - Change the anchor text of your links to drive people to click on them; - In HTML messages, try different text sizes and colors for your links. Click-to-Open Rate (%) Click-to-Open Rate (CTOR) is the ratio of unique clicks as a percentage of unique opens. The CTOR measures how effective your message was in motivating recipients who opened it, to then click a link. In other words, the click-to-open rate expresses the measure of clickthrough rates as a percentage of messages opened, instead of messages delivered. To calculate the click-to-open rate, the number of unique clicks is divided by the number of unique opens. The result is multiplied by 100%. Example: I sent the to 4 people. I got 3 unique clicks and 3 unique opens. My click-to-open rate is: 3/3 = 1 1 x 100% = 100% ROE Opens ROE Opens (rate of engagement (opens)) is the ratio of unique opens to the total number of opens. ROE Opens measures how engaging your is and how your recipients value the content of the letter. The ratio is based on repeated opens that show the fact of opening the by the recipient more than one time, or forwarding it to others. 22

23 To calculate ROE Opens, the total number of opens is divided by the number of unique opens. The greater ROE Opens, the bigger interest of the recipients in your . ROE Clicks ROE Clicks (rate of engagement (clicks)) is the ratio of unique clicks to the total number of clicks. ROE Clicks measures how engaging your offer is and how your recipients value it. The ratio is based on repeated clicks that show the fact of clicking the link inside the by the recipient more than one time or the fact of clicking the same link by other people if the was forwarded to others by the original recipient. To calculate ROE Clicks, the total number of clicks is divided by the number of unique clicks. 23

24 Afterword We'd really love for you to tell us what you like and dislike in G-Lock Analytics tracking service. If you dislike anything and would like it to be improved, or have any suggestions for new features, please, take just a few seconds, and send us an at support@glocksoft.com sharing your thoughts. Your suggestions can make a big difference, and will help us develop and improve the service for you. It's thanks to our fantastic user-base that we keep adding more and more features - and that's what makes us the best marketing tool. Sincerely, G-Lock Software Team